Written by

Perry Kostidakis

Senior Staff Writer @perrykos

Every team that has the desire to do anything significant in a season has to have that defining moment when it all comes together, where a team finally pulls together and realizes its potential; a season-changing series of actions.

We’ve seen it in plenty of teams recently: EJ Manuel and co. going to Virginia Tech and driving down the field for a game-winning touchdown,the Baltimore Ravens Hail-Marying themselves into the AFC championship, just one of those moments when everything comes together and the rush of emotion and excitement catch up to you and you can’t even process what just happened.

In a seasons of unmet expectations and ups and downs, of frustration and underperforming, the Florida State men’s basketball team may have finally had their defining moment.

Michael Snaer, senior leader and ice-cold clutch killer from last year, changed the whole dynamic of this season with another game-winning three, this time against Clemson. It was a shot that shouldn’t have gone in, but as with Snaer, the self-proclaimed owner of the “lucky touch”, they’re never supposed to go in.

But lo and behold, as the clock ticked to zero, the ball hit the backboard in the right spot, fell through the net, and then all hell broke loose.

Suddenly, the storyline of the game became “determined team grinds out miraculous win” instead of “young team blows another conference game”.

Suddenly, a team left to die now has brand new life invoked into it.

And the players knew it too.

“This is a critical game for our whole season,” Snaer said. “This game could be a defining game for a season, we wanted it to define us in the right way. We knew we had to go out there and come together. Play together and do everything that we had to do to make this win happen.”

“We needed some type of moment for us to kind of glue us together,” junior center Kiel Turpin, who played great in the absence of the injured Terrance Shannon, said. “I kind of felt like, in the past games, we weren’t really playing as much as a team as we should. Something like that, I think it brought us together.”

Even coach Leonard Hamilton knew it.

“It was a big win for us. We needed something positive for us.”

You could just tell that this team was meshing together, showing much more grit and determination than it previously had shown it was capable of. You had players like Boris Bojanovsky taking charges, Terry Whisnant diving for loose balls, players hustling to give their team the best shot to win.

The ‘Noles will be able to point to this game as Turpin’s coming out party, with the center leading the Seminoles in points (16), much to his success at the free throw line, where he went 8-9. It didn’t hurt that he threw in four blocks to go along with it.

And then along came Snaer, who has gotten much flack for how he’s played so far this season. The guard finished the game with four assists, but the fourth one was what set the stunning win all into motion, setting it all up before he even made his odds-defying three-point shot. He’s the one who drove in and then dished it tofreshman Devon Bookert, who then proceeded to hit the game-tying three pointer.

“Coach called the play for Mike and then Mike told me that the defense was going to be focusing on me, so he said just be ready to shoot,” said Bookert, who finished with 11 points, two assists, and one block. “He had faith in me, and God let the shot go in.”

The ‘Noles now have bigger fish to fry, traveling to Coral Gables on Sunday to take on a red-hot University of Miami team that just embarrassed the number one team in the nation.

There’s something to be said about a team that believes in itself. It’s a type of team that should be even more feared than the most talented, because they have a fire around them, a lack of fear and an abundance of faith that spurs them to greatness.

That game was more than enough to send these Seminoles to that level of unrivaled confidence. If they choose to embrace it, as Hamilton so wishes that they can, great things are in store.